Extra Innings: Aggies faceplant continues

By Chris Marler

No. 1 rankings shouldn’t matter in March. At least not in baseball. 

Nobody told that to Tennessee fans or Vol Twitter.

Regardless, the time for early season posturing and bragging is over. The only directional and guess-the-mascot schools remaining schedule for SEC teams will be played after Tuesday and Wednesday on-campus classes. The SEC regular season starts this weekend.

The Top 25 is loaded with SEC teams–again

Another sport, and another top 25 ranking is absolutely dominated by the SEC. For a conference that is usually labeled from outsiders as a football conference, it’s wild to see just how dominant the conference has been in other major sports as well. The SEC had at least seven teams ranked in football, men’s basketball, women’s basketball, softball, and baseball currently or at the end of their respective seasons. 

That includes 12 SEC teams currently ranked in the top 25 according to D1 Baseball. Nearly 50% of the top 25 are from the SEC and 75% of the league is included in the rankings. Whatever mathematical description is attached, it’s very impressive. 

What is Texas A&M’s actual rock bottom?

Maybe a better question is how bad does Texas A&M have to play or how many losses do they have to have before it’s time to have an honest conversation. 

The Aggies came into this season as the preseason No. 1 team in the country. They are currently 9-6. The argument that they should have never been No. 1 in the first place seems like an obvious statement regardless of hindsight. The bigger and more puzzling question is how many more games do they have to lose to drop out of the rankings and we just admit that they are not a good baseball team right now? 

Texas A&M is currently 15th in the SEC standings. The only team they’re in front of is Missouri who is 8-8 this season. The most concerning part isn’t the six losses, it’s that four of them came against UTSA, Texas State, Cal Poly, and New Mexico State. Even worse, this lineup that was supposed to be loaded one through nine has been held to five runs or fewer in eight of their 15 games. 

Lying in the weeds…

There are four SEC teams that are currently occupying the top four spots of the national rankings. Tennessee, LSU, Arkansas, and Georgia are a combined 65-3 and have commanded most of the national attention. However, there are several teams just lying in the weeds waiting. 

Alabama, Ole Miss and Texas may not have played the toughest schedules so far this season, but those three teams are a combined 43-3 and have all had winning streaks of at least 13 games. Alabama lost their first game of the season on Sunday to Presbyterian. Ole Miss and Texas are both currently on 13 game active winning streaks after starting the season 1-1. 

Matchup to Watch

We are going to learn a lot about the Florida Gators this week. The Gators have four games, all on the road, and all against top five teams. Florida will play Florida State on Tuesday then head to Knoxville for a weekend series against the Vols starting Friday. 

Those two teams are the only two remaining undefeated teams in the country. Florida would love nothing more than to end that streak. For both of them. 

Check out more of our SEC coverage here.